American Originals Now: Moyra Davey

Les Goddesses
followed by My Necropolis
October 27 at 4:30
East Building Large Auditorium

Moyra Davey in person

The romantic legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, becomes the starting point for Davey’s Les Goddesses, an homage to personal remembrance and the compulsion to record private experience. Wollstonecraft’s life and the known history of her daughters—filled with tales of lost love, longing, genius, and tragedy—become integrated with Davey’s personal history and early photography, specifically portraits of rebellious teenage girls. Davey recites one of her own essays for the camera while listening to an earlier recitation of it through headphones, at once inviting the viewer into her apartment and also keeping them at a distance. (2011, HD, 61 minutes)

With My Necropolis, the theme of interiority is developed through personal interpretations, friends on camera, and a line from Walter Benjamin’s 1931 letter to his friend, the historian and philosopher Gershom Scholem. (2009, HD, 32 minutes)

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